Five hours after the Wasp was hit, it was irreparably damaged but still drifting with the current. The U.S.S. Lansdowne was ordered to scuttle the carrier with a volley of torpedoes. The Wasp slipped below the surface at 2100 — 9 p.m. — then sank through more than two and a half miles of water to the bottom, where it has remained ever since, a giant carcass surrounded by miles of desert, in the permanent midnight of the deep ocean floor. In total, 194 men on the Wasp were deemed “killed or missing” on Sept. 15, 1942. One of them was John Shea.

On Jan. 2 of this year, a research vessel called the Petrel set out from Honiara, on Guadalcanal, to find the Wasp.